Monday, February 7, 2011

If enough time has passed since your ingestion of the proverbial red pill, you’ve probably had your fill of people calling you crazy or laughing at you for talking about truths you find to be obvious and incontrovertible. What is our responsibility towards these people? What is the proper approach to waking them up?

I’m not entirely certain it’s possible – or if it is, it’s rare – to sit down with someone, show them a limited scope of an unimaginably wide conspiracy, and produce an earth-shattering revelation on the spot. I can’t even remember what exactly it was that woke me up, likely because it wasn’t any one factor, or even a series of factors I absorbed over a short period of time. The closest explanation I can give for how I awakened is, sometimes the bullshit collapses under its own weight. For most people, awakening is about seeds that, over the years, were planted in their mind. If these seeds are cultivated properly, one day they will come to fruition.

The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only heard you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. – Edwin H Friedman

How do we plant viable seeds of truth in people’s minds, seeds that will grow and one day produce a revelation? If the soil we plant the seed in is acidic, it will not germinate. It is already likely that anyone still plugged in, who you are trying to show the rabbit hole to, will think you’re crazy, no matter how sober and articulate your presentation is. If you thrust the “truth” in their face and demand they see it, and degrade their intelligence if they’re at present incapable, you have planted the seed in poison soil.

The difficult truths of our time often involve damaging people’s ego sensibilities, instilled in them from a very young age; sensibilities like patriotism, faith, exceptionalism, triumphalism, and the deification of authority. The harder you attack these ego foundations, the more the unconscious individual’s ego will defend itself against you, and any truth will be lost within the maelstrom of anger and disgust you’ve engendered within them.

In the end, not only is it impossible – or highly unlikely – that your efforts alone will cause a spontaneous awakening, it is not your responsibility, and the effort put forth is likely little more than your own ego asserting its authority and dominance over the ignorant and the brainwashed; the sheeple. After all, if the truth were that obvious, everyone would see it and peace would reign on Earth forever.

It is almost never a problem with disseminating information; this is an information age. The truth is available for anyone who wishes to attain it. Obviously there is something else inhibiting people from seeking truth, and this is often an aspect of human psychology you are powerless against. If the ultimate goal is to awaken us all, to become more conscious, then your own ego is an obstacle not only to other people but to yourself as well, and you must come to grips with your own ego before you can concern yourself with enlightening anyone else.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always. – Mohandas Gandhi

Let us have faith in the truth, which, as the Buddha taught us, like the sun and the moon, cannot stay hidden forever. Suppress your own ego’s need to dominate or feel superior to others, and focus on your own awakening. When the student is ready, the master will appear; for some, you may be the master they seek in helping them become aware. But remember, as Osho has taught, the true master creates masters, not followers.